発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

← Hakken Archive

Yanko Design

Apple’s new M6 iMac is faster, not different

10.27

Apple’s October has turned into a full-on home makeover. First came HomeView , a $299 smart display for the kitchen with a generous helping of iMac nostalgia baked into its design.

Read at Yanko Design ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Apple’s new M6 iMac is faster, not different

More from Yanko Design on Hakken

Apple just launched a MacBook Pro 24-hours before its MacBook Pro event Yanko Design

Flora’s Wooden Chess Set Is Actually Shaped for Your Fingers Yanko Design

McDonald’s China turns old happy meal toys into a french fry-shaped wireless mouse Yanko Design

Blackview’s Zeno 2 Tablet Stays Small Without Losing the Headphone Jack Yanko Design

Satechi’s Dual-Monitor Adapter Gives Its USB-C Plug a Parking Spot Yanko Design

Beauer X8 transforming travel trailer has enough room for the whole family, and some more Yanko Design